Lee Wicker, grew up on a farm on the Lee County-Moore County line and has farmed since he was seven years old. Wicker, the deputy director of the NC Growers Association, said the agricultural sector in North Carolina, and the U.S., is in trouble. Younger farmers are turning away from the profession, and farmland loss threatens farmers across the state, he said.
Now, the Trump administration’s executive orders entailing increased immigration enforcement is threatening provision of immigrant labor, the agriculture industry and food supply, Staff Attorney at FarmSTAND Nathan Leys said.
Farms in North Carolina, and across the country, have historically relied on a labor force of immigrant workers, Wicker said. H2-A workers, a status for temporary immigrant farmworkers, are a large portion of that labor force, but some are also undocumented, temporary residents or legal permanent residents, Wicker said.
“We’ve got to have guest workers if we want to grow food in this country,” Wicker said.
Leys said the agriculture sector is completely dependent on immigrant labor, including undocumented immigrant labor. Nearly one in four agriculture workers in North Carolina are immigrants, according to a 2023 study from the N.C. Department of Commerce.
Although the Trump administration has not targeted any changes at North Carolina, the H2-A program or farmworkers specifically, the executive orders cultivate fear within those communities, Leys said. He said this fear can cause immigrant farmworkers to stop showing up to work due to the threat of deportation. Judit Alvarado, project manager at the Food Fitness Opportunity Research Collaborative, said immigrant farmworkers, non-immigrant farmworkers and farm owners in North Carolina all feel overwhelming stress and anxiety due to the uncertainty surrounding immigration enforcement.
“If the Trump administration actually succeeded in reducing the amount of undocumented people in the country, that would devastate agricultural communities,” Leys said.
If several agriculture workers stop showing up to work on farms, fields and plants will begin to shut down because of their depleted labor force, Leys said. The impact of this shift can be felt by both rural economies and by general consumers, he said.
Leys said rural economies in North Carolina depend on the agriculture sector, and farm owners with a depleted labor force and dying crops will have less money to support themselves and their families. Rural counties in North Carolina have also been historically excluded in receiving nutritional resources and support and depend on their own farms for access to food, Alvarado said.
